England wary of Wallabies World Cup bounce

England pinpointed the Wallabies’ weakness and executed perfectly at Twickenham but coach Stuart Lancaster expects to face a far more resilient side at next year’s World Cup.

The dominance of England’s almighty scrum proved too much to handle on Saturday afternoon (early Sunday AEDT) as the Wallabies went down 26-17 in their season-ending Test.

“I wouldn’t say it was a specific target but we felt if we played the game in the right areas of the field, we could use our set-piece to our advantage – scrum and maul,” Lancaster said after the match.

“I thought our maul was good. We generated a lot of penalties from that.

“Overall, we definitely felt we could win the game in that area.”

England will head into next year’s World Cup group stage at the same venue having won the Cook Cup for the past two years but Lancaster has played down any potential psychological edge.

“The tournament itself will look after itself when it comes around,” the England coach said.

“Australia will have a lot of time together with their new coach (before early October 2015).

“Look at the quality of the players they’ve got in their squad. More time together under the new coaching regime (means) they’ll only get better and better.”

But, in a note of warning, Lancaster said England would only get stronger with several British Lions to come back into the team.

“I think all teams will strengthen and develop over the course of the next 10 months.”

Wallabies coach Michael Cheika also played down the relevance of results ahead of next year but admitted Saturday’s loss was an important pre-World Cup lesson.

“Every game that you win or lose, there’s always something that you take from it going into the next time you play that team,” he said after Saturday’s loss.

“There’s some clear messages for us that we need to sort out and I think if we do that, then we’ll be well and truly competitive.”

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